History Main / FramingDevice

* Most of the action in BusterKeaton's film ''SherlockJr'' is presented as the protagonist's dream, and at the end he wakes up.
* The film ''MerlinsShopOfMysticalWonders'' features an elderly man telling his grandson horror stories. This became especially surreal when the film got the ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' treatment, since ''MST3K'' also uses a framing device (in this case, people held captive in a sadistic space-cinema), resulting in story within a framing device within a framing device!

* The Framing Device in ''{{Titanic}}'' is elderly Rose telling her story.

* ''StandByMe'' is framed by the Writer (aka the adult Gordy) reacting to the news of his friend Chris being stabbed to death.

* ''TheUsualSuspects'' is told as a testimony given by one of the story's main characters to the police who are interrogating him.

* ''[[ThreeHundred 300]]'' uses this coupled with UnreliableNarrator and possibly a kind of unreliable ''listener'', as the events depicted in the {{Flashback}}s are ''very'' over the top. The story is told by the sole surviving member of Leonidas' 300 Spartans, who was sent back to Sparta to tell the tale before the FinalBattle. At the beginning we see him telling the story at a campfire before a group of Spartans, missing an eye ([[{{foreshadowing}} which he still has in the flashbacks]]). [[spoiler:At the end we find he was telling it to inspire his men before the Battle of Plataea]].

* ''MysteryTeam'' begins and ends with the Mystery Team investigating a case.
* ''BigTroubleInLittleChina'' begins with old Egg Shen telling the entire story to a lawyer, but it's a pretty pointless sequence that has no consequences on the rest of the plot.
* ''ForrestGump'' is mostly framed by Forrest telling his life story to random strangers while waiting for the bus, which also servers as a very long HowWeGotHere.

* The bulk of ''VanillaSky'' is framed as David telling his story to a psychologist while in prison. Much of the narration even sounds muffled due to David wearing a mask at the time.

* Fanfic/TheFirstOfMany is the story of [[WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic Shining Armor]] calming Twilight's fears of her first date becoming a BadDate by telling her how his first date became a BadDate. What a great brother!

* The ''Pinball/CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon'' pinball takes place in a DriveInTheater where the titular movie is playing. The bulk of the game has the player waiting for the film to start and trying steal a kiss from your girlfriend. The action switches to the film itself during multiball, where the goal is to rescue Kay from the Creature.

* ''VideoGame/CallOfJuarezGunslinger''. The idea behind the game is that our hero is telling stories about his past as a BountyHunter to the other patrons in a bar. However, [[UnreliableNarrator our hero gets more and more drunk over the course of the game, and he starts exaggerating parts of his story, and eventually starts outright lying and making stuff up.]] [[spoiler: He isn't quite as drunk as he makes himself out to be, though, [[SecretTestOfCharacter and he has a reason to be lying.]]]] Interestingly, this actually affects the gameplay. Parts of the scenery and setting change as our hero points out things he didn't mention before, realizes that he isn't remembering what happened correctly, and, amusingly, when the other bar patrons misinterpret what he's saying or jump to conclusions about what happened next.

* ''DonQuixote'' is framed by a historian finding stories about the "famed" knight.

* ''KindHeartsAndCoronets'' is framed by the main character writing his memoirs as he waits in prison to be executed for a murder he ''did not commit''. The memoir details the eight murders he ''did commit''.

* ''CallOfJuarezGunslinger''. The idea behind the game is that our hero is telling stories about his past as a BountyHunter to the other patrons in a bar. However, [[UnreliableNarrator our hero gets more and more drunk over the course of the game, and he starts exaggerating parts of his story, and eventually starts outright lying and making stuff up.]] [[spoiler: He isn't quite as drunk as he makes himself out to be, though, [[SecretTestOfCharacter and he has a reason to be lying.]]]] Interestingly, this actually affects the gameplay. Parts of the scenery and setting change as our hero points out things he didn't mention before, realizes that he isn't remembering what happened correctly, and, amusingly, when the other bar patrons misinterpret what he's saying or jump to conclusions about what happened next.

* ''BroadwayDannyRose'' is told this way. A group of people has gathered around a table, recalling the events that make up the movie.

The FramingDevice is a narrative technique in which a story is surrounded ("framed") by a secondary story, creating a [[NestedStory story within a story]], often through SeparateSceneStorytelling. The inner story is usually the bulk of the work. The framing device places the inside story within a different context.

Occasionally, an entire series can use a persistent FramingDevice, such as ''{{Cro}}'', which was framed by a recently thawed mammoth, who was telling the stories which composed the bulk of each episode. A noteworthy example from the days of radio is ''Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar'', whose stories were told in the form of explanations to a private detective's expense account. To a lesser extent, devices such as the CaptainsLog can be viewed as a FramingDevice, especially when (as in many ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episodes) they appear to have been written after the fact.

The FramingDevice is OlderThanDirt: It goes right back to the Old Kingdom of AncientEgypt with the "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor", c. 2300-2100 BC. Sometimes the trope is written using nested framing devices that are several layers deep, as in the ''Literature/ArabianNights''. ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'' is framed by a story of an arctic expedition coming across the dying Dr. Frankenstein; ''Literature/TheRimeOfTheAncientMariner'' is framed by the mariner foisting his story on an unwilling wedding guest. One of the first (if not ''the'' first) examples in film is from ''Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari'', which (on a suggestion from Creator/FritzLang) framed the original story as a {{flashback}} in an asylum.

* The FramingDevice in ''{{Titanic}}'' is elderly Rose telling her story.

* The book ''Literature/TheManuscriptFoundInSaragossa'' and its later [[TheMovie adaption]], ''Film/TheSaragossaManuscript'' take this trope to extreme lengths, telling stories within stories within stories ''within stories''. The initial FramingDevice quickly disappears among the layers of narrative.

* ''Literature/TheBookOfLostTales''--the original draft of the book that would later be published as ''Literature/TheSilmarillion''--employs a FramingDevice in which a Man from England, Ælfwine/Eriol, discovers the lost island of the Elves and is told the ancient tales of their folk by a succession of characters.
* {{Lampshaded}} in a later chapter of ''SophiesWorld''. ThePhilosopher, after coming to the conclusion that they are [[NoFourthWall characters in a book]] written by a UN Major for his daughter's fifteenth birthday, says that the latter two shouldn't get too cocky either, because even they themselves might be just a FramingDevice... which they are, of course.

** Similarly, Holmes' investigation in the short story ''The Boscombe Valley Mystery'' is a FramingDevice for a story about a soldier in India, and his involvement in ''The Adventure of the Gloria Scott'' is entirely incidental.

* In ''Literature/TheIronDream'', we have a banal ScienceFiction story by AdolfHitler, a USA emigrant, followed by a FramingDevice in-universe essay to explain the point of this story.

* The {{Traveller}} universe has a StandardSciFiHistory as a sort of FramingDevice.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' Used a similar FramingDevice in it's "Anthology of Interest" stories, using the "WhatIf" machine. In the first episode it turns out that the FramingDevice was itself a product of the professor asking the WhatIf machine a question.

* Many ''Professor Layton'' games are told as Luke writing a letter to the player.
* ''VideoGame/Drakensang'': The prequel is framed by two of the main characters of the first game. Forgrimm is telling Gladys how her parents came to be married.

* ''{{VideoGame/Penumbra}} is being told in an e-mail from the soon to be dead Philip to an unspecified individual, asking that person to complete what he started, though Requiem does away with this.

[[folder:{{Video Game}}s]]
* "AceCombat04ShatteredSkies" is framed by a letter written to the protagonist, detailing the author's life during the game's war.
** "AceCombatZero" is presented as a Osean television documentary centered around the hero's journey, with the cutscenes presented as footage and interviews of your enemies.

* ''Film/IronMan3'' is framed as Tony recounting the events of the film from WhenItAllBegan to how it ended. [[spoiler: As it turns out, he was telling the story to Bruce Banner attempting to play the role of psychiatrist, even though Bruce isn't that kind of doctor.]]

* Many ''AstroCity'' flashback stories use framing devices of one of the participants telling of their experiences many years later, notably "Shining Armor" and "The Dark Ages".

** ''BarbieAndTheDiamondCastle'' frames the main plot as a story being made up by Barbie and Teresa for Barbie's sister Stacie.

* Many of Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs' stories had introductions in which the story was said to be a manuscript written by a character.

* ''ShutterIsland'' is presented as Dr. Sheehan's desire to set the record straight at last.

* In ''TheCompanyOfMyself'', it turns out that the whole thing is one long [[spoiler:therapy]] session.

* Also by Creator/StephenKing, book 4 of TheDarkTower series, ''Wizard and Glass'', is a back story told by Roland to his group.
** Similarly, in the next book, ''Wolves Of The Calla'', we get a another story within a story. This time, it's Pere Callahan explaining the to [[TrueCompanions ka-tet]] what happened to him in-between ''Literature/SalemsLot'' and now.

* Most of the ''Literature/{{Redwall}}'' books are framed as a character (often a traveler stopping for a visit) telling others a long story.